解説　場面 18「読み終えたあと」

"I see," said I as I glanced down the column, "that the coroner in his concluding remarks was rather severe upon young McCarthy. He calls attention, and with reason, to the discrepancy about his father having signalled to him before seeing him, also to his refusal to give details of his conversation with his father, and his singular account of his father's dying words. They are all, as he remarks, very much against the son."

「見ると」と私は新聞の欄を目で追いながら言った。「検視官は結びの言葉で、若いマッカーシーにかなり厳しく当たっているね。父が息子を見る前に合図を送ったという食い違い、父との会話を詳しく話すのを拒んだこと、それに父の最期の言葉についての奇妙な説明を取り上げている。それも、もっともなことだ。検視官の言うとおり、どれも息子にはたいへん不利だよ」

Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon the cushioned seat. "Both you and the coroner have been at some pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from his own inner consciousness anything so outré as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth. No, sir, I shall approach this case from the point of view that what this young man says is true, and we shall see whither that hypothesis will lead us. And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the scene of action. We lunch at Swindon, and I see that we shall be there in twenty minutes."

ホームズは小さく独り笑いをし、クッションのある座席に体を伸ばした。「きみも検視官も、ずいぶん骨を折って」と彼は言った。「青年にとって最も有利な点ばかりを拾い出しているね。彼の想像力がありすぎるとしたり、なさすぎるとしたり、交互に評価しているのが分からないかい。陪審員の同情を得られる口論の理由すら考えつけなかったなら、想像力はなさすぎる。だが、死に際にネズミに言及したことや、布が消えたことなど、あれほど風変わりな話を自分の頭の中から作り出したのなら、想像力はありすぎることになる。いや、私は、この青年の言うことは本当だという見方で、この事件に取り組むつもりだ。その仮説が私たちをどこへ導くか、見てみよう。さて、ここに携帯用のペトラルカの本がある。事件の現場に着くまでは、この件について、もう一言も話さないことにしよう。昼食はスウィンドンでとる。あと二十分で着くようだ」